they very well could define our season. A lot of people would look at towards the end of the season with 3 out of our 4 last games at home against division opponents, but those games are down the road and we need to take care of business first. If we get out of these next 3 games at 2-1, we'll be sitting at 6-4. That is huge. @ miami is a toss up, and @ chicago is always tough. If we can be 6-4 we are sitting pretty with ARZ, STL, and SF coming to our house. I'll take a loss @ detroit and wins against NY and MINN. But hey who am I kidding, lets win out.

I think, presuming this team has the moxy we think they do, that we win the next 4 games. Not saying it will be easy by any means. I think we recover over this short break of 10 days or so. We also seem to do better against stronger offense/weaker defensive teams. Same goes for minny and jets in our house......in theory we should win those games. Miami is on the road but again after a nice break to recoup we should theoretically handle them. The real bump I think comes w/ coming home from Miami and going right back out to Chicago a week later against another strong defense that we seem to struggle with. Also, as noted, chigago is always tough for us.

That would leave us at 8-4 w/ 3 must win division home games and a struggling Buff away game. I could see a potentially 11-12 win season there. Of course, predicting anything this team has done this year has been near impossible for most this year so who the hell can really tell. Guess that is why we watch the games.

Minnesota has been quietly picking off NFC-W teams. Fist Sanfran and now Aridzona. Hawks MUST break the chain! I just don't see how they can be counted as one of our 'easier' games though.

The Niner's had a fairly easy win vs Detroit, but, lest we forget, they have that dominant OL that make even Alex Smith look all-world at times...our OL doesn't dominate to that degree. I think our work will be cut out for us. We will yet again be pulling out 'squeekers' WHEN we win.